Welcome to women’s basketball
I hesitate to start writing this because I know once I do the avalanche begins.
However, welcome to our women's basketball blog. We do this because there is no longer enough room to get all the news and notes into the newspaper related to women's basketball in the Inland Northwest.
We try to cover four Division I teams (Gonzaga, Eastern Washington, Washington State and Idaho) equally as warranted, like to touch bases with our D-III team (Whitworth) and ocassionally touch bases with a pair of junior colleges (Spokane, North Idaho).
Mix in 14 young ladies from our area high schools playing D-I ball outside of our area and another 20 or so playing D-II, D-III or NAIA and that's a lot of follow.
Then figure the eyes of the women's basketball world are going to be trained on Spokane in 2011, with the first four rounds of the NCAA Tournament here, and well, that's a ton of news to track.
I can't promise a daily post - and I won't post during vacations, I'm not allowed to post during my furlough and I have hockey and figure skating in my future - but I'll do my best to keep you informed.
Among the information, I'll post my weekly ballot for the AP Top 25, stories
from games I cover, plus addition notes, and links to the local games, my
weekly notebook (which often will be longer on-line that what we are able to
get into print), and notes I stumble on during my research, which is often
related to our players out of the area.
Next year we'll be more national in scope.
For starters, here are the first
(on Idaho and PG Charlotte Otero), second
(on Whitworth) and third
(on Idaho and Gonzaga facing Top 10 teams) notebooks and Gonzaga's games with USC, Washington
and Eastern
Washington, two earlier blog posts (here
and here)
and a national story calling GU point guard Courtney
Vandersloot possibly the best in the country.
Please feel free to ask questions or make suggestions. Meanwhile, I'm
posting tomorrow's unedited notebook and heading off to a hockey game.
June Daugherty has been a head basketball coach for two decades
and was an assistant at Stanford after an All-American career at
Yet she was surprised by what she saw last week in Beasley
Coliseum when her
“It was one of the quirkiest games I’ve ever seen,” she said. “I
went back and watched the tape and it’s even quirkier.”
The Cougars grabbed 38 offensive rebounds, which led to 103
shots, and held the Gaels to just 37 shots while forcing 36 turnovers.
“How do you lose the game?” Daugherty wondered.
The trouble was WSU shot just 26.2 percent for the game while St.
Mary’s was a blistering 67.6 percent – and a staggering 10 for 12 on
3-pointers.
“It was the weirdest,” she said. “You have to credit St. Mary’s.”
She didn’t blame youth, though she starts three sophomores and
two freshmen.
Kiki Moore, a 5-foot-8 point guard out of
Her arrival has allowed sophomore April Cook to settle in at
shooting guard and lead the team in scoring at 15.1. Cook, Jazmine Perkins, who
averages 12.6 points, and Rosie Tarnowski, who just getting up to speed after
minor knee surgery this fall, were starters as freshmen. Cook and Perkins
averaged 14.0 and 13.8 points, respectively and Tarnowski was second in rebound
at 5.3.
Carly Noyes, a 6-5 post from
All the backups are young as well.
Point guard Danielle LeNoir is a sophomore, wing Katie Grad
missed her true freshman season with a knee injury, junior Katie Madison sat
out last season after transferring from
“All of them are dad gummed young, but they’re so talented and
they’re soooo competitive,” Daugherty said. “Each practice you can see them get
better, each game you see them get better. We’re excited.”
Even with a few quirky games thrown in.
On tap
Tip-ins
Junior Courtney Vandersloot is 16 points from becoming the 14th
member of Gonzaga’s 1,000-point club. … Bulldogs coach Kelly Graves is five
wins shy of 250 in his 13th season as a Division I coach. He also
has 45 in three seasons at Big Bend CC in
Junior Lyndi Seidensticker (Lewis and Clark) had a season high 13
points on 6 of 9 shooting as